by Rachel Aaron
“Men with swords are filling the hallway,” she said quietly. “And someone is talking with our guard.”
Eli spun around. Sure enough, there was their guide at the door in deep, frantic conversation with someone Eli couldn’t see. As he watched, whoever it was ran off, and the guard took up position at the center of the door.
“The game is up,” Josef said, looking at Nico. “I’ll take the front. See if you can’t find another exit.”
Nico nodded and they broke, leaving Eli staring at empty space.
“What are you planning?” he whispered loudly, trotting after Josef as the swordsman ran for the door.
Josef didn’t answer. He reached the door and stared down the guardsman, who had turned to face them, a short sword held in his shaky hands.
“I am sorry, Sir Spiritualist,” he said, peering over Josef’s shoulder at Eli. “Orders from the top. The other guards are coming right now. I have nothing but respect for your organization, but please, surrender quietly.”
Eli stared at the guard as if he’d grown a second head before he remembered his cover story and snapped back into character.
“Surrender?” he shouted, beyond indignant. “I am here on the business of the Spirit Court! I am apprentice to the Rector Spiritualis himself, head of the Eli investigation! When it comes to Monpress, I AM the highest authority! And I demand that you tell those men to stand down and let us pass!”
Eli had himself in a fury now, and it was working. The guard was sweating bullets, but he still didn’t move. Behind him, the clink of metal boots on stone was deafening as the guards marched down the hall, filling their only escape with a wall of armed men, and not the conscripts from outside either, but professional soldiers.
Eli was about to start a new round of threats when Josef threw out his arm, cutting him off.
Josef looked down at the guard. “You seem like a nice fellow,” he said. “Sorry about this.”
Quick as a cat, Josef stepped forward, sliding inside the man’s guard and pinching his inner arm just below the joint of his armor. The guard cried out in pain, and his sword fell from his now-limp hand. The second it dropped, Josef spun him around and gave him a push. The man went flying into the hallway, straight into the first pack of guards. They scrambled to catch him, but the guard’s weight sent them lurching backward. By the time they recovered, Josef filled the door completely. He drew his swords and stepped into a defensive position, spinning the blades in whistling arcs, an enormous grin on his face.
The soldiers in the hall surged forward, swords drawn, and as they crashed into Josef, the swordsman did what he did best. He planted his feet and, with a great roar, swept his swords, one high, one low, into the crowd. The soldiers, trained to fight in formation, all held their weapons at the same height. Josef’s swords sang over and below them, past their defenses. The man on the far left had it worst. Josef’s swords slammed into his armor at the shoulder and the thigh, flinging him sideways into the soldier on his right. Josef carried the momentum, throwing himself into the sweep. His weight, the force of his blows, and the unexpected angle were too much for the men, and they smashed into the far wall, grunting in pain and surprise. Swords clattered to the stone as they tried to catch themselves, but it was no use. The moment they were off balance, Josef spun and slammed them again, with his leg this time, beating them against the wall and into the doorman, who’d just finished getting up.
What had been a coordinated charge was now a mess of men on the floor. Josef grinned and fell back to the door, not even winded. The second line of soldiers got their swords ready and were starting to push past their fallen comrades when a whistle sounded. It was a high trill, and the moment it went off, the guards began to pull back.
Josef fell into his defensive crouch, but the hallway was emptying rapidly until only one man stood at the far end. He was tall and thin, with neatly trimmed black hair streaked with gray, and a bored, slightly annoyed expression. His eyebrows arched when he saw Josef.
“So,” he said, “you’re our Spiritualist?”
“Depends,” Josef growled. “Who’s asking?”
The man fixed him with a cold stare. “I am Edward di Fellbro, Duke of Gaol.”
“The man himself,” Eli whispered, peeking around the corner. “Why is he here? Aren’t dukes supposed to lead from the back?”
Josef ignored him, tightening his grip on his swords. “Look,” the swordsman said. “I’m not going to bother feeding you a story. We’re just here looking for the thief, same as you. No need to get nasty. Just back off now before more of your soldiers get hurt.”
“Back off?” The duke chuckled. “You’re in no position to be giving orders, boy. But I have no mind to waste time and money forcing you out. Surrender now and I’ll let you keep your life.”
“And if I don’t?” Josef said.
Edward just smiled, a cold, thin smile, and moved his mouth, saying something Josef couldn’t quite make out.
From his place against the wall, Eli gave a little squeak. “Josef!” he cried. “Get back!”
Josef jumped backward a second before the hearth beside the treasury door erupted in a wall of white-hot flame. Almost before he could recover, two flat stones came sailing through the fire. Josef’s sword knocked the first one aside before he’d even realized what it was, but the next one clipped him on the shoulder, and he grunted in pain.
Eli jumped forward, grabbing the stone from where it had fallen and turning it over in his hands. It was a paving stone from the hall outside, and as he touched it, he could hear the rock babbling in terror.
“Josef, watch out,” Eli said. “He’s a wizard.”
“I guessed that,” Josef grumbled, rubbing his shoulder. In the doorway the flames were dying down, revealing the duke again. He hadn’t moved from his place at the end of the hall, only now he had a pile of paving stones in front of him. They were stacked neatly, leaving a large, bare patch on the floor around him. He smiled at Josef and casually tossed a paving stone in his hand.
“The offer of surrender is still open,” he said.
Josef opened his mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with his offer, but at that second, the duke saw Eli crouched on the floor, his blond wig askew. The duke’s pale, lined face went white as snow, and he opened his mouth in a shout that drowned out Josef’s comeback.
“Eli Monpress!”
Eli jumped and looked just in time to see every single one of the paving tiles shoot forward. They flew from the duke in a flock of loosed fury, flying through the air faster than stone was ever supposed to move. They flung themselves at Eli, and they would have done some terrible damage had Josef not grabbed the thief by his gaudy collar and tugged him down at the last second.
The paving stones whistled inches over their heads, but Eli barely had time to get some air back into his thundering lungs before he heard the duke’s voice roaring through the keep. “Spirits of Gaol! Your duke commands you! Crush the intruder!”
“Hold on now,” Eli said, looking up from his crouch. “You can’t just order a building like-”
The walls began to shake. In the hall, stones ripped themselves from the supports while dropped weapons picked themselves up off the ground. Everything, nailed down or not, began to lift and turn toward the doorway where Eli and Josef were crouching.
“Nico,” Josef said. “We need that exit.”
Behind them, the room was quiet. Out in the hall, things were beginning to speed forward.
“Nico!” Josef shouted.
At once, she appeared beside them, whether through her shadow stepping or just her terrifying speed, Eli couldn’t tell. She flung back her hood, her scraggly black hair standing straight up, her eyes bright as candles, and a familiar wave of fear washed over the room. She pushed Josef aside and turned to face not the hallway or the things flying down it, but the enormous treasury door. Her hand shot out, the silver manacle jerking and shaking on her wrist, and her fingers dug into the iron like it
was river mud.
Deep in the stone under their feet, something screamed. Nico ignored it, digging her fingers deeper, her glowing eyes narrowing to slits as she spoke a command.
“Move.”
The enormous door moved faster than Eli had ever seen iron move. Bits of stone went flying as it surged forward, slamming itself shut with an impact that shook the keep.
For a moment, everything was silent, then there was dull clatter as the flying object collided with the now-shut door. The duke was shouting on the other side, but the sound was very far away. Then, all at once, the room began to scream.
Eli and Nico both slammed their hands over their ears as the terrible sound swept over them.
“What did you do?” Eli shouted.
“I closed the door,” Nico said, her voice thin and strained as she pulled her hood back over her head.
“I can see that,” Eli said. “My problem is with how you did it.”
“What?” Nico glared at him, her eyes bright as lanterns. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Oh, sure,” Eli said, rolling his eyes. “Solved the crazy wizard problem, but you can’t just do that to spirits!”
“You’ve told me to scare spirits before,” Nico said grudgingly.
“That’s different,” Eli snapped. “Giving spirits a little scare is one thing. It doesn’t hurt anyone and it moves things along, but that’s not what you did. You sank your fingers into that metal and gave it an order, and that, Nico, is not good. That door can’t say no to you when you’ve got your teeth in its throat. Giving spirits orders they can’t say no to is no better than Enslavement, and we don’t do that. Besides, now we’re trapped in a screaming, panicked vault that, as you mentioned earlier, has no other exit.”
Nico turned away, scowling. Eli grabbed her shoulder to turn her back around, but Josef stepped between them.
“Save it,” he said, sheathing his swords. “Let’s find a way out. Quickly. We’re losing structural integrity.”
He was right. Large streams of grit were falling from the ceiling as the stone arches that held up the vaulted ceiling fought to get free and crush the demon. Chunks of rock clattered down the stone walls, landing in a series of crashes that were only getting louder.
“We’re not finished,” Eli said, pointing at Nico. Then, without another word, they split to search for some way, any way, out.
“All right,” Eli shouted, scanning the shaking walls. “The thief got in, and he didn’t take the main door. I can promise you that. Look for something unusual.”
“Could you be more specific?” Josef yelled, staring blankly at the quivering wall.
“I don’t know.” Eli ran his fingers over the shivering, weeping rock. “Discolored stone, a corner out of place, anything that could mark a secret door or passage, maybe a bricked-over window. I’ll take a mouse hole at this point.”
“Can’t you just do something wizardly?” Josef said, dodging a chunk of stone that fell right where his head would have been.
“I don’t exactly think these spirits are in the mood to chat!” Eli shouted back.
Josef gave him a rude gesture just as Nico cried out, “Here!”
Argument forgotten, Eli and Josef ran over to find the girl standing in front of what looked like a perfectly normal patch of wall behind a toppled shelf.
“What?” Eli said, looking around frantically. “I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I,” Nico said. “But listen, it’s not screaming.”
She was right. While the other stones were in full-on panic, the patch of wall in front of them, a little eight-brick square, was perfectly silent. Now that Eli looked, it wasn’t shaking either. It was a rock amid the chaos, and now that he saw it, he wondered how he could have missed it earlier.
He stepped in close to the stone and ran his fingers across it, very gently. It felt hard, like stone, but different-soapy and almost hollow when he tapped it. A slim grin crossed Eli’s face. He raised his foot and, taking aim, gave the wall a good, hard kick. A clean, sharp crack appeared down the middle of the block of wall, and the stone crumbled to dust, revealing a dark tunnel just the right size for a man to crawl through.
“What was that?” Josef said.
Eli waved him away, focusing instead on what was waiting inside the tunnel. A few feet in, leaned carefully against the tunnel’s wall, was another square of wall identical to the one he’d just broken, and stuck to it was a small, white card. Eli reached in and snatched the card between his fingers. There was no printing on it, no identification, just a sentence written in neat, masculine cursive.
Thought you would need this.
Eli cursed under his breath and shoved the card in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “Let’s move.”
“What was that?” Josef said again. “Is this a trap? Is it safe?”
Eli gave him an incredulous look. “Anything’s safer than this! Get in the tunnel! And watch that square. One whack at the wrong place will cause it to crumble.”
Without further hesitation, Josef crawled in, pressing himself against the wall to squeeze by the square of fake wall. Nico followed right behind him, buried deep in her coat. When they were through, Eli paused for a moment and dug around in his pockets, pulling out a large, white card printed with an elaborate, cursive M.
“First rule of thievery,” he muttered to himself. “Never waste an opportunity.”
With that, he tossed the card toward the center of the room. It swooped through the air and landed at the foot of the fake Lion of Ser. Eli nodded and ducked into the tunnel. Crawling on his hands and knees, he turned and, very, very delicately, lifted the square of fake wall. Behind them, the dusty remains of the old fake stones were already indistinguishable among the grit and rubble showering down from the ceiling. Satisfied that they wouldn’t be followed, at least not immediately, Eli gently plugged the entrance. The square of fake wall fit perfectly, as he’d known it would, and the tunnel plunged into darkness. Their path secured, Eli turned and made his way down the tunnel after Josef and Nico.
The tunnel ended unceremoniously twenty feet later in the ceiling of a wine cellar. Josef and Nico were already waiting when Eli jumped down, and Josef reached up to press the loose boards on the ceiling back into place behind him, leaving no sign that they’d ever moved.
Eli stood doubled over for a moment, catching his breath. When he’d coughed up enough dust to start a mortar company, he straightened and took off his gaudy red coat, which was now a dull, pinkish gray.
“Come on,” he said, shoving the balled-up coat behind an ancient wine barrel. “Let’s go.”
“We’re getting out, then?” Josef said, slapping the dust out of his shirt.
“Nope,” Eli said. “We’re going to get our Fenzetti.”
Josef gawked at him. “Are you mad? The duke knows you’re here. The jig is up. Only thing for us to do now is get out with our skins. Anyway, you don’t even know where the other thief is. How are you going to find him when there’s a whole duchy out there looking for you?”
“I know how to find him,” Eli said, taking off his wig and carefully placing the dusty blond mess into his pocket for cleaning later. “He certainly hasn’t left Gaol.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Josef said. “You said he was smart. Leaving seems like the smart thing to do.”
“Ah,” Eli said, smiling. “But you’re forgetting the first rule of thievery.”
“Which one?” Josef sighed. “You have a hundred at least.”
“This one is very important,” Eli said, stepping up to the cellar door and putting his ear against the coarse wood. “The last place a man looks is under his own feet.” He paused for a moment, holding his breath, and then opened the door with a flourish. “After you.”
Josef stomped out, followed by Nico. But as she passed, Eli caught the edge of her sleeve. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes still suspiciously bright.
Eli tightened his grip. “I’m sorry if I was roug
h earlier, but I meant what I said. I know you did it to save us, but you really can’t go around doing that to spirits. There’s a lot I don’t know about how you work, Nico, and I’m sorry I haven’t helped you like I should, but there’s a big difference between giving a spirit a little scare and giving it an order.”
Nico looked away. “I had to. Josef-”
“Josef can’t say this because he’s not a wizard,” Eli said. “What you did back there was as bad as any Enslavement, if not worse. At least in Enslavement there’s a battle of wills the spirit could maybe win, but no spirit can win against you. Demon fear is simply too strong. I’m being serious, Nico. Don’t do it again, all right?”
Nico clenched her fists. On her wrists, her manacles began to shake softly, but Eli held on to her coat until, at last, she nodded.
“Promise?”
Nico nodded again, and he released her sleeve. Josef was waiting for them on the other side of the door, arms crossed over his chest. “What was that about?”
“Nothing,” Eli said and smiled. “Let’s get moving.”
Josef gave him a skeptical glare, but he nodded and let Eli lead the way out of the cellars. Nico trailed behind, her face hidden by the long hood of her coat.
The wine cellar was at the bottom of a warren of cellars that ran under the keep. Fortunately, the warren let out into the kitchen yard, which was where they made their escape, blending in with the mass of kitchen workers and other menials who were all gathered at the edge of the keep, presumably to watch the excitement. Whistles were blowing everywhere now, and hordes of conscript patrols were racing through the streets and toward the citadel. In all the confusion, no one noticed three more scruffy, dirty people, and they were able to duck down a less-fashionable side street without trouble. Once they were a block from the castle, Eli changed direction, guiding them through the winding streets seemingly at random until he came to a stop in front of a modest building that, if the sign outside was correct, housed a trading company.
“Wait here,” Eli said. “I’ll be right back.”
He flashed them a knowing smile and vanished around the back of the building. Josef, fed up with arguing, slumped back against the wall while Nico took her time brushing the dust off her coat. A few minutes later, Eli emerged from the front door carrying an enormous ledger and grinning like a maniac.
